An analysis of the main new features in SQL Server Reporting Services 2016

Part six of a six-part series of blogs

Microsoft have put a lot of effort into SSRS 2016, including completely rewriting Report Manager (it's now called Web Portal) and creating separate software for publishing reports to mobiles. There are lots of new features to contemplate!

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Other new features in Reporting Services 2016

This page contains other improvements to SSRS 2016 which I couldn't shoe-horn
into any other category.

New report format for PowerPoint

You can now save any report in PowerPoint format:

The new PowerPoint format option.

The result viewed in PowerPoint 2016:

By default you get a single slide.

If you set a page name for each group and page breaks between groups, you can
get one slide for each set of data:

Here I'm showing the films for each director on a separate slide (you've
long been able to do a similar thing for Excel workbooks).

R Analytics

R is the trendy statistical analysis language, and is now fully integrated
into SQL Server 2016. You can
install the R client as a separate package to get this:

When you run Visual Studio, you see this.

And that, I'm afraid, is all you get in this blog on R (it's next but one on
the Wise Owl new course list!).

Report embedding

You can now embed mobile and paginated reports in other web pages by using an
IFrame along with URL parameters.

Previously you had to create a special report control, and embed this in an
ASP.NET webpage - again, Microsoft are trying to make SSRS reports universally
accessible, rather than relying on Microsoft technology and browsers.

Power BI and Reporting Services

You can now pin items to Power BI dashboards, although there are a few
pre-requisites: